Smells like #running?

How many senses do you use when you are out on your run? Challenges like the recent #RunChatHunt focus on the visual: what can you see and photograph whilst running? As I ran one of my favorite Canadian routes last night, the air cooling to its dew point, I started to notice and count the unique smells.

You’ve possibly run here: A well-manicured older neighborhood with medium-to-large fully detached homes interspersed with mature hardwood trees. Do you smell that? It’s the aroma of laundry belching forth from a dryer exhaust vent. I smelled two different brands of laundry being dried on my run through this neighborhood, proud of myself for being able to discern the difference.

Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)

Or how about here: A hydro cut that is home to an old field meadow of pasture grasses and common weeds. The common milkweed are in flower now, and their scent is sweet and heavy, but the mingling odors also reminded me of living at our old farm house, the air thick with the scent of fresh-cut hay. It was an absolute bonus to have a scented reminder of my youth!

Or possibly here: The edge of your local water body, in my case, the Otonabee River, and what is that smell? The river has always had a unique smell of its own, and I love that my tap water tastes just like it whenever I return for summer holidays. There was something extra too, possibly the carcass of a decaying mammal, that made me run a little faster.

The Otonabee River

These are the scents I purposely took note of along my running route last night, six in total, no doubt with many more sub-notes detectable only by the noses of cats and dogs.

You now have a challenge: The next time you are out from your run, aside from the obvious answer of yourself, what scents do you notice? I’d love to hear about them! Feel free to blog about it let me know!